


Crossing The Rubicon.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Author's Favorite, Episode: s05e12 Comes a Horseman, Episode: s05e13 Revelation 6:8, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-06
Updated: 2008-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peace does not come easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing The Rubicon.

It is so easy to laugh.

That's what they don't understand. Them. The rest. The humans. They don't understand that they are nothing, dust still in walking form, playthings for the gods. They don't understand how stupid or mortal or fragile they are. They think they are important. They think they matter.

They don't.

They walk and they leave nothing behind, not even their footprints. Kingdoms rise and fall, countries build and burn and build again. And nothing matters. None of them. They are nothing.

\--And, yet, between it all, there is Joe--

What are they, really? Footprints in time. Kronos had it right. Ignore them and they go away. Ha. They do. They all go away eventually. They go away and they stay away and there's nothing left, not really.

He was born in a city with fifteen syllables, none of them any of these people today could think to pronounce, but his Kronos could. His name, Kronos was the last to say it. Kronos was the last who could.

All gone now.

All gone now, like the humans.

All gone now.

\--And, yet, on the edge, there is Joe--

Even his Kronos, his god of time, who conquered history but never learned any of it, even his Kronos is dust. His poor, sweet boy, there before his first kill, always there. Older than history. Older than his history. Older than there was time.

Nothing existed before him. Nothing will exist after. There will never be a world without Methos. There never could. The world would fall apart were it not for the four Horsemen at the four corners, tying the sky to the ground.

It all falls apart.

He does not see the sky now. It's somewhere or maybe it's gone, flown up into the heavens.

There is no dirt now, only dust and dead humans and his dead Kronos.

Damn the man.

\--Somewhere, there is screaming.--

Damn the man!

He should have stayed away. He told him to stay away. He should have obeyed him, he should have stayed gone and forgotten and away and never come forth to walk the earth, the four of them, to trample on the unworthy and rise above the constellations to take their place at the feet of the gods, because this is not a world for legends, but for facts and science and the cold autopsy, and Kronos never listened. He never _listened_.

\--There is screaming.--

What is lightening today but electrons and protons and yet more science, it has been tamed like a horse, that wild fire that gives them all life. This age has taken the myths and turned them into stories and cartoon characters, and they have never known fear, oh, no, not them, they will never fear the Horsemen, they will never fear the lightening, they will never fear Kronos and Methos and Caspian and Silas, and they will never fear them because they are _dead_ and they are no more.

\--And he is screaming.--

And for what, Kronos? For glory? For power? You never listened, no, not you, too good to listen, you took their science, their tame god, and you tried to use it, but you didn't know, you didn't know, you never knew, I tried to tell you, I tried to warn you, I tried to make you see, but, no, you couldn't see, could you, you never could see, you never looked to see and realize and understand and come to believe that you never could, that there was something that you could never do, and that was understand, Kronos, you never understood, you never tried, you never listened. I tried to warn you. I swear on my name, Kronos, I tried to warn you. But you didn't listen. And now you are dead and I killed you myself in all but deed, you, my brother, my lover, my own self, the fates will ravage the flesh from my bones for the act, but, no, the fates are not here, the fates have been buried in sands and shut up in hour glasses and tamed with their bottled lightening, and there was no time for you, creator of history, this was never a time for you.

You, who had all the time in the world, you should have waited. Why could you never learn to wait?

\--And he is screaming.--

The scholar, you called me, as if it was noteworthy or special or different, but you were the scholar of us all, weren't you, you could play us like a harp, you could bring us to your knees at a stroke, you could rearrange the stars to suit your purposes with only a word, you, the master of it all, you took the manipulator, and the brute strength, and the embodied force, and you forged them into us, into we, into the Horsemen, and now we are no more, and why, Kronos? Why?

What more was there to us, in this time, in this day, in this age? Had not the greats fallen already from their pedestals, to mingle with the humans in the dust? Darius, Kronos. The great Darius, dead, by a human. The shame, the burning humiliation, and, yet, you never learned. You scholar of immortality, you never learned you never learned you never learned.

I would have made myself your teacher and brought you to this century, but, ah, no, no, no, that would have tamed you, the unstoppable force, I would have made you like science, and that would never do, to bring the gods down to the earth and wipe out Olympus, no, that I could never do. I would have built for you a castle of your dreams and left you there, bound by your thoughts, but never to ravage the earth. Not until the coming of the next age, when all will be the way I will it to be. I, Methos, have declared it so, and that would have been an age for us, my brother, my lover, my own self. We would have been gods again, and there would have been none left to stop us. We would have ruled, and you would not have needed potions or fountains or Duncan MacLeod, it would have been you and me and us and our brothers, but not now, Kronos, not now, never now.

I changed with the age and you never could, you stupid brute.

\--And he is screaming.--

Stupid brute, stupid stupid brute, who never saw reason when he could see his own desires, you got what you deserved, you got what I told you was coming to you, a sword through the neck, for tempting fate, for tempting me, for pushing me, for making me do it, you made me do it, brother, you made me kill you, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's all your fault. You should have stopped. You should have. I told you to. If only you had listened. If only you had ever obeyed me. If only you weren't yourself, you would still be alive, Kronos, you stupid brute, you animal, you antique. You should have learned and you should have listened and this is all your fault all your fault you brought this on yourself you pushed me too far I didn't want to Kronos I swear I didn't want to you made me do it it's not my fault I had to do it you stupid brute Kronos you pushed me too far.

You. You did this. Kronos. It's your own fault. Your own fault. There never would have been another death. You never would have died. The Horsemen would never have ridden again in this age, but for you, Kronos, you forced fate to following your own desires, and now the fates have bitten you in the ass, and this is all your fault and your own doing, Kronos, I told you not to, I told you not to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to. You should have just left me alone, brother! I told you to leave me alone! If you had just let me be and ignored history and fate and our past and our future, then, brother, you would still be living, so this is all your fault, and you are dead, and you are dust, and this is your own doing, Kronos, you stupid brute. You pushed me too far and you made me do this and this is all your own doing, none of this is what I wanted. None of this.

Oh, you stupid beautiful man.

\--And there is nothing.--

And it is so easy to laugh. So easy to laugh.

\--And, yet, there before him, is Joe. Yelling.--

What is there left for him? There is no friendship here, not any more. Kronos burned those bridges for him, there is nothing left, all of it gone, everything he worked for, everything he built, it is dust with his brothers upon the earth, there is nothing, no more, nothing. Nothing remains.

\--And, yet, there before him, is Joe. Yelling at him.--

He reaches out and touches stone and retches, once more, upon the mosaic floor of the church.

Before him, there is Joe.

"You look like crap," says Joe.

"Can you stand up," says Joe.

His rock. So that he may one day again stand. But he must first reach. He must first want.

He understands this choice. There is forwards and there is backwards, all of it in time, there are choices and desires and decisions and he is master of them all, he knows all the whirls and ebbs of time and choices and what should have been and what should never have been, he knows that choices lead to choices lead to choices and paths you can't take back until one day you take a sword to your brother, your lover, your own self, and there is no one there to call it practice, for it is real and true and alive and only one of you will still be alive and he laughs and he laughs and he laughs, because Kronos is dead, and Joe is there, and he is in a church and he is alive and there is nothing left but a Watcher doing his duty, perhaps a friend, but not now, never now, because there is nothing else, nothing remains after the Horsemen.

There is no world now. Nothing can remain now. But there is Joe. His rock.

No.

The Watcher, the lying Watcher, who remains when all is lost, because of his oath. Because at the end of all time, the fates have surprises. Only the traitors remain true. Oh, the fates know humor and it is so easy, so easy to laugh.

"You know, you've killed yourself four times already doing that," says Joe to someone. But there is no one there, no one but rocks and wood and dirt and stone and the dead and the ghosts. And the Watchers. Only the Watchers stay. Him and Joe. Only the Watchers.

Nothing remains. Only dust, and the Watchers, and him.

Methos presses bloody palms to his neck and sobs.


End file.
